February 28, 2011 Issue

There’s a strong flâneur tradition at The New Yorker (e.g., Joseph Mitchell’s classic accounts of poking around New York Harbor, Anthony Bailey’s pieces about his various strolls, Ian Frazier’s memorable account of his hike along Route 3), and it’s a pleasure to see it continue in this week’s issue of the magazine. James Wood, in his favorable review of Teju Cole’s debut novel, Open City, clearly enjoys novelist-as-flâneur writing. He likes it because, as he says, “what moves the prose forward is not event or contrivance but a steady, accidental inquiry, a firm pressurelessness (which is to say, what moves the prose forward is the prose – the desire to write, to defeat solitude by writing).” Of Wood's many fine descriptions of the book, the following passage clinched it for me:

Eschewing the systematic rigor of Sebald’s work, as well as its atmosphere of fatigued nervous tension, Cole has made his novel as close to a diary as a novel can get, with room for reflection, autobiography, stasis, and repetition. This is extremely difficult, and many accomplished novelists would botch it, since a sure hand is needed to make the writer’s careful stitching look like a thread merely being followed for its own sake. Mysteriously, wonderfully, Cole does not botch it: “When I turned around, I saw that I was at the entryway of the American Folk Art Museum. Never having visited before, I went in”; “In early December, I met a Haitian man in the underground catacombs of Penn Station”; The days went by slowly, and my sense of being entirely alone in the city intensified”; At the beginning of February, I went down to Wall Street to meet Parrish, the accountant who was doing my taxes, but I forgot to bring my checkbook”; Last night, I attended the performance of the Ninth Symphony, which is the work Mahler wrote after Das Lied von der Erde.”

Wood’s choice of quotation in the above excerpt is inspired! The five sentences quoted are my idea of the ideal sentence – subjective, specific, active, interesting. The only reservation I have about reading Open City is that, because it’s fiction, it’s not true to reality. I much prefer to read factual writing. Wood doesn’t appear to have any problem with this issue. He appears content to seek the real in fiction, an endeavor that has always struck me as paradoxical. Nevertheless, in light of Wood’s stimulating review, I intend to read Cole’s Open City. I’ll post my review of it in the near future.

The flâneur tradition continues in another piece in this week’s issue, as well. Ian Frazier’s Talk story “Bridge” describes a walk on the Walkway Over the Hudson, the former Poughkeepsie-Highland Railroad Bridge, in Poughkeepsie, that is “the longest elevated pedestrian bridge in the world.” I enjoyed this piece immensely, particularly the following terrific description of river ice:

On the river’s surface, a vast field of broken ice, all white (ice slabs), dark brown (water), and light brown (ice slabs under water), in a pattern of splendid randomness like winter camouflage, proceeded slowly oceanward.

How fine that “in a pattern of splendid randomness like winter camouflage” is! Frazier’s on a roll in the Talk department. In addition to “Bridge,” he’s written at least four other dandies in the past year. They are: “The Big Shoe” (February 1, 2010), “Lovefest” (March 1, 2010), “Parade of the Night” (September 20, 2010), and “Shower” (January 24, 2011).